Super-ATMs Being Rolled Out

News.com has an article up looking at something I find interesting and somewhat confusing. The Vcom ATM is an attempt to make people's lives more convenient by adding unexpected functionality to the standard Teller Machine. Besides dispensing cash, new ATMs can fulfull the roles of PayPal (by sending money to people), bank (by cashing checks on the spot), and cellphone store (by selling Verizon services). From the article: "The Circle K and Exxon Mobil machines are far more basic than 7-Eleven's Vcoms, which have been called overengineered. Several dozen customers polled informally outside a 7-Eleven in Winter Springs, Fla., recently said that they had never used the Vcom inside, and one woman who said she did use it once to withdraw cash complained that it was 'confusing' and 'complicated,' and added that she would not use it again. 'There were just too many steps,' said the woman, Peggy Baker, who teaches French in Winter Springs. 'And the $1.75 transaction fee was too much--it was painful.' She said she was not interested in the other Vcom features, which require users to enroll and enter a Social Security number on a touch screen."

Comments

In case you want to read it

[MichaelSmith]

TFA

Re:In case you want to read it

[Lispy]

You must be new here, nobody actually read TFA. Therefore they just dropped the links altogether.

Are you sure?

[Zen Punk]

If only they had it throw up a windows-like dialog box with "yes" or "no" they could get people to sign their live savings over to 7-11 very easily.

Where's the link

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is that too 'confusing' and 'complicated'?

MacDonalds

[Toby The Economist]

ATMs are the MacDonalds of the banking world.

MacDonalds don't offer slow food.

Making an ATM offer slow services is not a good move; they just won't be used, in exactly the same way that very few people would buy a burger from MacDonalds if it took twenty minutes to cook.

Re:MacDonalds

[Professor_UNIX]

MacDonalds don't offer slow food.

The fast food company with the golden arches is called McDonald's not MacDonalds. MacDonalds is probably some Irish pub in Boston that takes 30 minutes to serve up your corned beef sandwich. Either way you're wrong.

Re:MacDonalds

[eyegone]

Everyone knows that MacDonald's is the home of the Big Mc.

Re:MacDonalds

[rapidweather]

McDonalds has gotten away from their core business long ago by offering too much on the menu. So, they don't have your burger, fries and drink ready when you arrive. What was simple to do in the 1950's is now hard to do.
Also, the drive in window takes 20 minutes to get to, the driveway up to it is always full. Not enough employees on the production line, those that are there are lost in the details of the now-complicated menu.

ATM's are reasonably quick. Anything that a customer can get to can get fouled up, namely the deposit slot, sometimes jammed, with a clueless bank totally unaware. Long holidays can lead to the ATM's being essentially out of service for longer periods of time. Improvised signs by helpful visitors to the ATM warn of danger only too often. Lack of scotch tape to stick the sign to the front of the ATM a problem, usually solved by sticking the sign in an almost non-existent crack in the ATM, at the mercy of the wind, rain, and the person that visited the ATM just minutes before you come along.

Even better...

[Lispy]

The only upgrade I would like to see would be if they made it actually return money. But well, that's just me...

Actually, it's my 20cents. Harhar!

Literal Identity Theft

[Scoria]

enter a Social Security number on a touch screen.

A masked thief enters a convenience store. The cashier tells him to take whatever he wants, but is surprised when he opens the ATM, removes a hard disk drive, and runs up to the cashier. He shouts, "I own you!"

The cashier says, "No! I meant that you could take anything but me!"

Super-ATM? It exists for ages

[GreatBunzinni]

I don't see how they can be considered "super-ATMs". I'm from Portugal, which isn't a tech superpower, and in here the regular ATMs offer that kind of service since the early 90s.

Re:Super-ATM? It exists for ages

[coffeechica]

Absolutely serious. I've got a bank account and use transfers for pretty much everything, from the phone bill to electricity to payments to Amazon. My wages get paid into that accout. And for everyday money I use either cash or my debit card, since you can pay with that at most shops. I use online banking regularly, so my bank sees me maybe once a month, if that. And even then I use the ATMs instead of the teller, unless I need something more complicated. I honestly cannot think of a single instance where I'd need to use a check/cheque/however you want to spell it.

Re:Super-ATM? It exists for ages

[hanssprudel]

Are you guys serious? Yes, we use "cheques" all the time in the U.S. I get my wages in a check, I pay the rent with a check, etc. I do use a debit card for most purchases, though.

Yes, they are most probably serious. I am equally surpised every time I hear americans talk about checks. For me it is a novelty from a past age: you might as well be saying you have to talk to your money scrivener and goldsmith about payments.

I get my salary via a transfer into my bank account. Even if I had not (for convenience) given my employers my account number for the direct transfer, I would get it as a payment through a clearance service. Likewise I pay my rent through a direct monthly transaction from my bank account, but if I hadn't set that up I could have done via bills paid directly through my Internet bank account (larger companies can send it as an online bill, so I don't even get a paper bill cluddering my mailbox every month). I pay my other bills (electricity, broadband, etc in the same way).

Beyond that I have a debit card and a charge card for purchases, and cash for small private transactions. What would I need checks for?

Re:Super-ATM? It exists for ages

[ahillen]

Are you guys serious?

Yes. The last time I wrote a check was probably some time in the end (or middle?) of the 80s, when I had just gotten my bank account and ATMs were not that common. Then I had to fill out a check to get money from my bank account. Since then, I never wrote a check. If I want to give money to other people, I either give it cash or transfer it from bank account to bank account electronically. The later I can do either online, by telephone, or at some ATM-like machines at the bank (I could also go to the bank during the opening hours, of course, fill out a form and give it to some employ/throw it in a letter box). But sending checks? Never, seriously. My wage is transfered to my bank account, my rent is transfered from my bank account...

Re:Super-ATM? It exists for ages

[beeblebrox87]

I'm studying at university in the UK, and there are still occasional situations when one needs to use a cheque. I had to pay my tuition bill with a cheque (since the university is not willing to pay the transaction fees involved in debit card or bank transfer payments) and was paid by cheque when I sold an old computer to a friend, but aside from such rare situations I never use cheques. My parents live in the US and tell me they hardly ever use cheques either, their salaries are deposited into their bank accounts and they pay their bills with their bank's online bill-pay feature. Not sure what all the USians here are talking about, cheques seem to be dead almost everywhere.

Re:Super-ATM? It exists for ages

[KDR_11k]

Depends on your account, some banks have accounts where you have to pay a few cents for making transactions on these machines.

BTW, the transaction systems 'round here run on Windows ME.

nice features, one more needed: voting booth!

[toomanyhandles]

Can they set them up to handle the voting booth tasks? It seems the same companies that make these reliable, traceable units, just can't figure out how to make a voting console properly. Merging the two could solve the USA's current problems with (apparantly) rigged elections.

Re:nice features, one more needed: voting booth!

[sjg]

That will never happen, unfortunately. I recently asked a friend why we don't just hold elections online, surely that could be done. To my surprise his immediate response was well thought out and eloquent, I won't do it justice, but the jist is.. If citizens can very easily just vote on issues from home, then why is there a need for decision makers in government at all? So once you allow everyone to vote from home, you open yourself up to that. Once you remove all the decision makers, you end up with a government totally run by committee (in this case, the American people). Not only would this not be a good thing (as anyone who has heard a "designed by committee" software engineering crack can understand), but with the racket that US politics has become, the politicians and those financing them will never allow this to happen. It becomes too hard to stack the deck in your favor.

Re:nice features, one more needed: voting booth!

[toomanyhandles]

It follows that voting has a MUCH HIGHER level of security required in voting than in dispensing cash, because a tiny amount of fraud can have large consequences. It's the kind of thing you really can't afford to get wrong. The kind company you need is not the one that knows how to make the kind of trade offs you need to make a practical financial system. You'd want the kind of company you'd trust to do things like design a system to secure sensitive military data transfer.

Perhaps a little reminder is in order on this thread.
The exact same companies who say it is "impossible" to build voting machines that also provide a paper trail to allow for recounts and validation, are the exact same companies who MAKE ATMs.

You know, those machines that give you a precise and verifiable paper record of your transaction and account balance, the instant you adjust it.
Heck Australian voting machine designers looked at the US systems and laughed at us in disbelief, saying that the only reason to implement a system in this fashion was to purposefullly allow it to be cheated.

All the fuss over the Florida e-voting; Diebold and Windsor/Nixdorf saying "not possible" re: paper trails; the ATM down the street that I use monthly, has those same companies name and logo on it. Let's just roll the voting feature into the banking one then, since the banking one works and is eminently more traceable and verifiable than the current voting machines.

You stated in your post that the security needed for voting is far stronger than that for money. I agree; but at this time, there is no meaningful security implemented for electronic voting, all the data shows that the system has been jiggered with, and with total impunity. Just try jiggering with your ATM account; see how far you get.

Perhaps my initial post was too subtle.
We have been screwed
OK, I let it all hang out. I feel better.

You never been to europe

[SmallFurryCreature]

We took the fast out of fast food. In fact the "slow food" places like McD and Burger King are were you probably spend the most time waiting to get your meal.

As for this whole ATM idea that becomes a small store. Well, surely paying your bills through it is only for the poor (else you would just let your bank do it for free) who can only pay with cash. 1.75-3 dollars seems like the extra banks charge here if you want to pay a bill cash as the counter instead of through the mail from your account.

As for other services. Yeah great. Internet access through an ATM? Talk about a waste of hardware. You got a small bank vault, a complex teller machine sitting idle while somebody is browing goatse and 20 fuming customers behind him waiting to withdraw cash?

Couple that with the fact that an awfull lot of people are already confused enough by regular cash dispensers and this sounds like a really bad idea.

Then again what do I know. Maybe people said the same things about the original ATM's.

But 3 dollars for paying a bill. Yikes.

Social Security number?

[Walzmyn]

SS Number? I give that to no one unless they are paying into the system for me - ie. my boss. It ticks off a lot of doctors offices when that box is blank but when I ask 'em why they need to know it they just stare at me.

I'd just as soon not have one at all, but I'm sure not pluging it into an ATM.

Re:"too many steps"?

[hattig]

I've seen ATMs offer mobile phone top ups for quite a while, which is probably useful if you have a pre-pay mobile.

Anything else takes too long - when there's a queue you aren't going to live long if you start using slow specialist services.

I also happen to think that charging people to get access to their own money is a bit rich, but luckily I'm in the UK so all the standard bank and building society cash machines are free regardless of who you bank with. Going abroad is always a shock though, because we're used to withdrawing smaller amounts of money more frequently than large amounts of money infrequently.

Sorry, didn't RTFA

[bazorg]

Over here in Portugal we have a company called SIBS which is owned by a consortium of banks. They're in charge of managing the network of ATM and the services provided to other companies through those machines.

Possibly the best single feature they rolled out was to make available ATM payments to just about any company wiling to sign up. The first adopters were the utilities companies, that because of this now have less offices and "point of sale" than needed 20 years ago. Today any company can become a client of SIBS and get a 5-number code to be its ID. This ID will be printed on invoices along with another number, which identifies the transaction. Anyone can use an ATM to pay the invoice. Just type in these 2 codes, the amount to be transfered and you're done. The receipt will be printed out and for some services (ie: mobile phone top-ups) you get to see the effect within a couple of seconds.

Building on this basic operation, many companies hired the services of SIBS to add their own menus and sub-menus on the ATMs, so these days there is a quite a lot of stuff you can do:

• buy concert tickets
• buy train tickets
• make bank transfers
• allow/change permissions for automatic payments from your account (ie: allow the water bill to be paid without confirmation)
• top up mobile phones
• pay public transport monthly tickets . this one had some extra work: the public transport tickets have to get in the ATM so their chip gets read/written. They're similar to London's Oyster cards

and so on. overall it's pretty cool and has been working for a while now, that's why I'm surprised that adding bank transfers to ATM operations (in the US?) makes the news on /. in 2006. A few years ago, as banks started to have www-based services, new forms of login information were added to allow people to do at home most of these things, except getting cash out of your printer :)

Security

[zaguar]

I'm sorry, but I don't want to shop at my ATM. I want to do one thing - Deposit and withdraw money. I don't want a media center running on the latest and greatest OS - with the latest exploits included (free of charge)

Mind you, that would be the only thing banks provide free these days.

$1.75

[od05]

$1.75 is not terribly bad, in Chicago you can't find a single ATM for less than $2.00.

Social Security Legalities?

[Khyber]

Having RTFA I don't see mention on the main reason for inputting a SSN. Last I checked, The SSN is NOT VALID to be used as a form of identification (even though we all know we're branded and identified by this number by our government overlords.) When are we going to finally stand up to these invasive bastards?

Re:Social Security Legalities?

[Formica]

Um, where exactly did you check on the SSN not being a valid form of identification? http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_154.html

Re:Cashing checks?

[petermgreen]

that only works if you have

1: an account
2: either sufficiant funds or sufficant overdraft facility to cover the cash withdrawl.
3: an atm that supports deposits (do most us atms do so? i know most in the uk don't seem to)

i presume by check cashing they are reffering more to the service you get from places like pawnbrokers who will give you cash and then essentially lend you the money until the check clears (for a fee ofc)

Surveys are often as dense as granite

[tinkertim]

VCom machines make a fortune from people who normally do not hold bank accounts. The check cashing is ideal for people who work the swing shift and miss most of the check cashing joints an liquor stores.

Many people who don't have a bank account also pay their bills via western union, either a moneygram or purchasing money orders to mail off to someone , or drop in the rent box on the way home.

These people really don't give a rat's ass who gets their social security number, they hope whoever steals it manages to pay off their bills and fix their credit score.

They also don't care about the $1.75 fee, as most people who appreciate the machines don't in fact use the ATM feature.

Vcom cornered a market nobody else has been able to touch. There's a 7-11 in every blue collar neighborhood in most first , and third world countries and those things are popping up globally.

So .. as the game show used to say .. 'SURVEY SAYS' -> once again, nothing useful because the people surveying are just too dense to realize exactly who these things were designed to serve.

Rather swift marketing imho :)

I'd settle for better basic functions

[sacrilicious]

Every time I go to my bank's ATM I withdraw $300. To do this, they make me hit "withdraw money", then hit "from checking", then present me with several pre-selected amount buttons all below $200 which makes me hit "other amount", then I hit 3-0-0-0-0-ENTER, then I hit "confirm with receipt". Message to the bank: how about if you customize my options so that one of the first buttons I have the option of hitting reads "withdraw $300 like you have every time you've been here in the past ten years". I'd really like to hit just one button instead of ten. Doesn't seem like rocket science.

Re:I'd settle for better basic functions

[Anonymous Coward]

Chase (BankOne) ATMs have a feature just as you describe. You can set a "preferred fast cash amount." You enter your pin, and instead of hitting enter, you hit the "fast cash" button. It will validate your pin, and dispense your fast-cash amount (and will automatically print a receipt without prompting for it, if you have customized that setting too.)

I'm actually very happy with how functional the Chase ATMs are here in Chicago... except for that one time I saw a malfunctioning ATM that actually had a windows start menu/task bar displayed over top of the ATM software screens... That one kind of scared me... I decided to use a different ATM that evening...

Re:I'd settle for better basic functions

[Sebilrazen]

Wells Fargo ATMs allow you to do this for their 'Quick Cash' button. You can manually configure it to be the amount you need, want.

Ever been to Japan?

[benher]

I'm with the Europe folks on this one - This is really only news for Americans. Here in Japan, ATMs have had this sort of functionality via the Postal Savings system for years. That, and most ATMs at convenient stores can be used to pay utilities, purchase tickets, and a hoard of other services. Maybe US banks just don't feel any pressure to innovate. Hell, in comparison to the rest of the world in terms of a user experience it's not even innovation - it's catch-up.

Re:Checks? How cute..

[hab136]

Do they still use *checks* in the US? I mean, they haven't heard of wire transfers and online banking? Seriuosly, how do people receive their wages or pay their rent there? By CHECKS?

Most full-time employees receive their wages by direct deposit. Most mortgages are auto-deducted from bank accounts.

Apartment rent, part-time employee wages, and person-to-person transfers normally use checks, yes.

The US never really caught on to wire transfers. The $50 fee per transfer might have something to do with that (Bank of America last year, transferring to my sister's Wachovia account)

"Super" ATMs?

[dodobh]

Hey, Indian banks have been offering these features for a few years now. I have been using these services for ~ 7 years (ever since I got an ATM card).

And the menus are not confusing, they are actually laid out pretty well. (One additional option - other services, then just go down one or two levels more to get to the precise service you want). Cash withdrawal and cheque deposits are totally different services and have different buttons.

Re:Canada

[MKalus]

the one thing that still irks me with Canadian banks though is that they have those abitrary cutoff times / dates.

Heck, most computer systems from large institutions run 24/7, why can't they process a payment on the weekend? There is no real reason WHY they have to hold it (they do take the money out of your account after all right that instant).

my ATM dispenses home mortgages

[peter303]

With real estate going up so much every month, my bank decided to bypass mortgage brokers and give out instant mortgages via ATMs.

When you key your pin in, your now see the third line "MORTGAGE ACCOUNT" below "CHECKING ACCOUNT" and "SAVINGS ACCOUNT". When you select MORTGAGE ACCOUNT, you can ask for an instant appraisal (linked to Zillow.com) and the day's mortgage rates. If you like what you see, then you can apply for an instant cash out mortgage and it appears in your account. Then you can do waht you want with the new cash.

This new feature was activated April 1, 2006 according to the disclosure.

If my ex could use it...

[jessecurry]

My ex girlfriend used to use the Vcom all the time, and she was almost entirely technologically illiterate. After she used it the first time she said that it was "fun", and that she "felt like someone from the future".
If she can use one, almost anyone should be able to use one. She'd go cash her payroll checks, which she would get on Saturday night after 6pm. If the check was ever less than $300 there was no fee. Plus there was the added benefit of the Slurpee that she would get me before she left the store.
I thought that there was no way the machine would pay for itself, but she insisted that there were lines at times.
I think that the idea is a good one, I think that people will use it, and I think that we will see machines such as this for a long time to come.

Ummmm

[8ball629]

I think the vCom machines in the 7-11s are great for getting money orders at crazy hours. I've used the vCom down the street quite a few times just for the money order feature and its not confusing at all unless you don't know english. Also, I didn't have to sign up to get a money order. One of the cool features about getting a money order was you can put somewhere around 20 bills in at once and it sorts and counts them all out for you. Its great if they're coming out with something better but the current ones aren't THAT bad...